How Did Dr Ronald Lear Internal Control

Dr. Ronald Lear was possessed to commit fraud because he held a high position at Hardwell University and he held a position of trust as the president of the University. Senior administrators allowed Dr. Lear to sidestep university policies. There were several obvious red flags that Dr. Lear was up to no good. Dr. Lear used his position of power to influence other employees into breaking the rules for him and this led to important internal controls being disregarded. Dr. Lear was finally exposed when a local news channel asked him about his want to purchase a new plane for the university. The local media expressed concern about such an extravagant investment during a time of budget cuts, layoffs, and double-digit tuition increases (Wells, 2007).
Lear wanted to show that he was of high status as the President of Hardwell University. He felt pressure to portray himself as a predominate figure and no one questioned him because they were under the influence that he had the power to do what he wanted. Dr. Lear realized that he had the opportunity and the power to do whatever he wanted and spend as much as he wanted with little questioning from other staff. He was able to bend the rules to his benefit and once he realized this, he would use it to his advantage as often as he could. He had to of known that what he was doing wasn’t right but he had incentive to just keep doing it since he had so much power to manipulate everyone around
It is common for fraud to happen when too much trust is placed in an employee who has a position of power. It is most definitely going to happen when an employee is allowed to bend the rules and have exceptions to the policies that were put in place as internal controls to prevent things like this from happening. There are many organizations that have employees with positions of trust and it is important to make sure internal controls are in place to prevent employees from running amuck and doing as they please. The senior administrators admitted that they should have done more to prevent Dr. Lear from spending excess amounts of university money. Dr. Lear was aware that what he was doing was wrong but knew that he could get away with it. His position of trust led to him being greedy. It is clear that all three parts of the fraud triangle are present in this case as he had the opportunity and incentive to commit the fraud and was able to rationalize his within himself and to anyone who questioned